


Perfecting The Techniques Of Applying Peroxide

by Gildedmuse



Category: Rent (2005), Rent - Larson
Genre: Character Scene, Depression, Gen, HIV/AIDS, Hair Dyeing, Haircuts, One Shot, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 05:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18653884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gildedmuse/pseuds/Gildedmuse
Summary: Mark was starting to worry that Roger would never get better, but the small things can bring him back.





	Perfecting The Techniques Of Applying Peroxide

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted to LJ in 2006 for the prompt "Yellow"]

**Perfecting The Techniques Of Applying Peroxide**

Roger is getting better. Mark will insist on that much with anyone who asks, who so much as gives him that funny look that means that they might be thinking about trying to talk him into the rehab opinion again. No, Mark will not let his best friend be shipped off to some padded cell so that some guys can give him drugs to get him off drugs. Mark isn't going to just abandon him like April did. Mark is his best friend and Roger needs him and... And besides, he tells everyone, Roger is getting better.  
  
He never really believed that, though.  
  
It's almost been a year of withdrawals and relapses. A year of Roger staying up at night sick and shaking, needing Mark to watch over him to make sure he doesn't get too far lost in his delusions. It's a year of begging him to take his medications, of trying to get Roger to want to stay healthy and want to live because, yeah, sometimes it does seem like April took the easy and best way out. It's a year where Mark will come home and find Roger laying peacefully in bed, high again, and he can clear out the drugs all he wants, but if Roger is desperate enough, he'll find a way to shoot up.  
  
It is hard to see all that, repeating it, month after month of Roger not wanting to live, of being too sick to stand, of being high, and not start to believe that it wouldn't change. Mark has already accepted that the rest of his life will be spent in this cycle of watching over Roger, and he's willing.  
  
After all, it was Roger who picked him up off the streets when Mark didn't have anywhere in the city to stay, having come right off the bus from Providence and spent a week in bathrooms and doorways. Roger, who Mark could identity with because when he saw him on stage with his guitar, and it was like the personification of all the things that Mark wanted out of his art. Roger is the reason that he's still here now and hasn't gone home with his tail between his legs, because at least someone out there understands that starving and freezing is worth it for art's sake. Roger is the one that introduced him to Maureen -  
  
Okay, maybe that one part of their relationship Mark could do without. A lesbian? Really? All this time and she seemed to really like sex but then, no, suddenly penises are gross?  
  
But back to Roger. He has this passion for his music and this willingness to take Mark in and believe in his film even when Mark's parents were screaming at him to get his ass back to college. Roger stayed with him, though, because, "you're too in love with that damn thing to give up."  
  
So Mark is determined to stay with Roger. Even if he never gets better. Even if Mark spends the next year watching his friend shrink down to nothing, and he's already too small and worn-down looking, and even if he never stops using, Mark is going to stay. Because Mark likes to think, that is just what bohemians do when this happens to their friends. You stay with them.  
  
It isn't like anyone else is here with them. Maureen is off to live with her girlfriend (and it isn't like Mark is bad at sex or anything. He doesn't get it.) and Collins has a teaching job and, well, Benny hasn't been around for a year now. Someone has to look after Roger, even if he won't get any better.  
  
And Mark really doesn't expect him to. Even after a few weeks where he doesn't come home to find Roger high, he just thinks of it as a good period. Soon enough, he thinks, Roger will shoot back up. All it takes is one wrong mention of April, his family, his band, anything and Roger will snap. Mark can see it coming, and he figures that expecting it will keep him from getting his hopes up.  
  
Even when he takes his old fender guitar out and sets it on the table - doesn't play it but just kind of stares at it as if looking for something that got lost in those strings. Even then Mark is sure it's just a phase. He just can't be convinced that maybe, somehow, Roger is going to get through this.  
  
It is a week in late December when Mark is sitting on their ratty old couch, staring up at their skylight covered by a sheet and wondering if it's better at keeping cold air out that way, or taking it down and using it as a blanket when he hears soft footsteps approaching. They almost sound nervous, but maybe he only thinks that when he looks down and sees Roger standing there, fidgeting like he does when he's anxious. He's holding a bottle of peroxide, looking between it and Mark.  
  
"Could you help me?" He asks, holding it up to show Mark. He already knows what it looks like, of course. Roger went through them all the time, back when he had shows and he'd keep his hair looking short and bright yellow. Now the white is only at the tips, and he looks more like Kurt Cobain than Paul Cook. Roger still looks like a songwriter, but it is like some weird mix of punk and grunge that Mark wasn't use to seeing on him.  
  
Mark nods, taking the bottle from his hands. It's old, smells strongly of bleach of course and the whole bottle looks like it's been through hell but Roger buys it in bulk. From back when he use to cut and bleach his hair almost monthly, and eventually let Mark cut it when he found out his mom use to cut his hair when he was a kid and Mark picked up on that, so he actually could be trusted around his own precious locks. Now he has a mane of it, and as they go into the bathroom and Mark grabs the scissors, he realizes just how much of it there is to be hacked off.  
  
"You sure?" Mark asks as he watches Roger pull it back, almost into a ponytail with his hands low so that all Mark has to do is cut across and most of it will be over with.   
  
He looks back at Mark in the mirror and shrugs. "Yeah," he says, like it's no decision at all. "Not like I'm doing anything with it."  
  
So Mark cuts it off. Right down the line Roger had given to him, and most of it is gone in a second and landing in one giant clump on the floor.   
  
It's not really that big of a deal. It's just hair, yellow tips from before that lead up to the fresher brown roots. A years worth of hair that has been with him since that day, and coming home to find the bathroom stained red and Collins unable to explain. A year's worth of hell, and maybe that is too much weight to assign hair but Mark gets into it, cutting until it's short and messy again, like it should be. Like it was before all of this. Clipping until all the damaged ends and the weight of it are nothing but a mess at Roger's feet.  
  
"Don't cut it all off," Roger reminds him and that gets Mark to stop. He looks up, staring at Roger through the mirror. He looks younger, somehow, with the years of him cut clean off. His hair is short again and messy, sticking up at a few odd angles like it always would. Roger meets his eyes in the mirror, giving Mark an odd look.  
  
Right. It's just hair.  
  
"Give me the bleach," Mark says, grabbing the bottle and rubbing it into his hair. It isn't long before the brown turns lighter, to yellow. Even sick, that bright color gives him a young look. Like when Mark first met him, and everything about Roger screamed punk rocker and passion. That is what Mark remembers about him as he watches the short bunches of hair in his hands go yellow.  
  
Sure, it stings, but Mark keeps his hands in Roger's hair. He rubs at the brown, and Roger leans on the sink with his eyes closed and this small smile that he gets on his lips. Mark is used to seeing it whenever he gets his hair played with, even when it's just to drain it of color and the room is filled with this poisonous smell of bleach. It doesn't matter to Roger. He just likes being petted, by April or Mark or anyone who happens to be doing his hair.  
  
Mark use to laugh at him and call him a geek for it, and now he just scratches behind his ear. At least it's something normal.  
  
Mark rubs the peroxide into his hair and the smell of bleach feels the bathroom. Mark sniffles, rubbing his eyes off on his sleeve as tears spring up. It's just the smell, stronger than he remembered. Like the smell when they'd worked all night to get the blood out of every crack and surface and the bathroom had smelt like bleach for a week. And before that, when Mark would help Roger bleach it out for a gig and it would mingle with the smell of pot and get them into this high that comes with art, telling bad jokes to each other and laughing anyway.  
  
Nothing has ever gotten Mark to cry, not April's death, not when they found out Roger was sick. Nothing has been able to do it expect the stupid bleach. It's just from the smell.  
  
"You okay?" Roger asks, his own eyes red in the mirror. Mark just wipes his face against his sleeve again, hands pulling away from Roger.  
  
"You're done." Mark walks out of the room, a little unsteady, but the smell is just too strong. There is too much hair in there and too much bleach and too much Roger for him to handle. He needs some fresh air.  
  
So he stumbles out of the bathroom, leaning up against the wall and taking a few deep breaths that he somehow chokes on. Roger pops his head out, hair already yellow under the lather. "Mark?"  
  
"Fuck," Mark mutters, and his eyes sting even more as he rubs at them, trying to stop the stupid tears from the stench. "I forgot how bad that stuff smells."  
  
"You're a pussy," Roger says, rolling his eyes. He goes back into the bathroom to wait to wash it off. Mark doesn't have anyway to tell him, but he wants to hug his best friend. Wants to smile and laugh and pump his fist in the air in a cheesy victory dance. Because fuck the cycle and everything that has happened. Maybe Roger can get past that and the addiction. Not every single bohemian story in this city has to end on a bad note, does it?  
  
Mark doesn't really believe that, though, until he sees Roger come back with his hair in messy clumps, washed out and a bright yellow. He smiles at Mark, almost humble and nervous as he lets Mark take him in. "How does it look?"  
  
"Better," Mark says, running his hand through the mess. "Much better."


End file.
